Tag Archives: Scarlett Johansson

It’s no shocker that I loved Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion adventure of Isle of Dogs. It’s a mild shocker that I didn’t cry watching it. Either time! My NPR review is here. UPDATE: I’m on the Pop Culture Happy Hour episode where we hash over some of charges of insensitivity and cultural appropriate that a few critics have levied against the movie, too. That’s on the same page as the review, but you can hear below, too.

No one in the world can possibly appreciate the way the narrator of the new Coen Brothers picture, Sir Michael Gambon — the man who once declined the role of James Bond because, quoth he, “I’ve got tits like a woman” — says “in westerly Malibu” as much as I do. But just about everyone seems to like the movie. I do, too. My NPR review is here.

Time was, the summer movie season — when blocks got busted and Oscar contenders got out of the way — began Memorial Day weekend and had shot its wad by mid-July. Once in a while you’d get a great late-summer picture, likeThe Fugitive,released Aug. 6, 1993 (and nominated for Best Picture, come to that.) But generally the big action pictures, which gradually gave way to the superhero flicks, needed six or seven weeks before kids got marched back into school so studios could benefit from repeat business.

In the 21st century, the summer movie season advanced to the first weekend in May, a date that in recent years hasbelonged to Marvel Comics adaptations, whether they’re made by Marvel Studios, likeThe Avengers,or by other studios, like theSpider-Manpictures (both the Raimis and the Webbs) from Sony, or theX-Menseries, from Fox.